Create a Print Ready Business Card in Adobe Illustrator from Start to Finish

This is an extra-long Illustrator tutorial that will show you how to create a business card in Adobe Illustrator from start to finish, and get it ready for printing.

You need a business card printed – maybe you don’t have a logo yet – but you have Illustrator and Photoshop and you need to get started. This tutorial will show you how to set up and design your card, and also how to prepare it for printing with any printer you choose. I cover CMYK, high resolution images and Bleed in this tutorial as well as offer a few design tips as we go to help you have a professional, finished look.

Remember: Business cards with bleed must be sized 3.625 x 2.125 for any printer. They must be CMYK (not RGB) and include high resolution (300 dpi) photographs.

The stock image used in this tutorial can be downloaded here for FREE: http://morguefile.com/archive/#/?q=cupcakes
along with many other free, high quality photos.

Thanks so much for watching! You can find many more quick tutorials for Illustrator and Photoshop on my website: http://oneminutedigital.com/

I saved the image as TIFF, but I want it transparent to go on a solid background. The image has white background. Do I have to remove background. Can you do a tutorial on this please? Why is TIFF better?

Just found your tutorial, and as a newcomer to AI, but long time user of PS, I found your tips for print settings most valuable, especially the "bleed" explanation. The penny finally dropped – I've been "bleeding" the wrong way! Doh! Both myself and my local print shop will be forever grateful to you!

This doesn't address how to print the business cards after it is made into a pdf file. Basically what options to choose when actually printing the cards on business card stock paper. How do you tell the printer to print your business card in tiles perfectly on the card paper? etc. So I would say she kind of fail in providing that info. Hopefully she or someone explains this last method.